FDA to lift gay blood ban, anti-gay right certain to pitch a fit

Today, the FDA’s Blood Products Advisory Committee is meeting to discuss
potentially revising that policy. In November, the Department of Health and Human Service’s (HHS) Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability
recommended easing—but not lifting—the ban. It suggested a one-year
deferral policy instead, under which gay men would be permitted to
donate after a year of abstinence. The FDA will consider this
recommendation, as well as scientific evidence on HIV blood safety,
during its meeting.

Initially, gay men was banned completely from donating blood because of fears of getting blood contaminated with the HIV virus. However those who support the change point to the hypocrisy of the current policy. Earlier this year, a team of medical professionals and legal experts vouched for this change in an issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"We think it's time for the FDA to take a serious look at its policy,
because it's out of step with peer countries, it's out of step with
modern medicine, it's out of step with public opinion, and we feel it
may be legally problematic," said Cohen, who co-wrote the article with
Jeremy Feigenbaum of Harvard Law School and Dr. Eli Adashi of Brown
University's medical school. The lifetime ban for gay or bisexual
men stands in contradiction to other FDA policies regarding people
considered high-risk donors due to their sexual behavior, Cohen noted.

For example, there currently is a maximum one-year ban in the
United States for blood donations by men who have had sex with an
HIV-positive woman or commercial sex workers. The same goes for women
who have had sex with HIV-positive men.

The article goes on to say:

Other countries have already moved to limit their bans on blood
donations from gay men in recent years. Canada has changed its policy to
a five-year ban, there's a one-year ban in place in the United Kingdom
and a six-month ban in South Africa.

None of these countries has
experienced any increase in HIV-positive blood donations, noted Dr.
Steven Kleinman, a senior medical advisor to the AABB, an international
non-profit blood bank association.

Current technology allows
accurate detection of HIV in the bloodstream within weeks of exposure,
Kleinman said. Changing the ban to six months or a year remains a
conservative approach that still allows officials to prevent
contamination of the blood supply, he said.

The Atlantic article also says:

While infection rates decreased
by 33 percent globally between 2001 and 2013, infection rates have
stayed stable in the United States, and have actually increased among
men who have sex with men, according to the most recent CDC numbers.
So while gay men are still at increased risk for HIV, advances in
medical technology make it much easier to test people, and their blood,
for the virus now, and no matter how people answer the donor
questionnaire, their blood will be tested for HIV and other diseases anyway. The risk of contracting HIV from a blood transfusion is currently about one in 2 million, according to the Red Cross.

One would think that no one could argue with these facts, but that doesn't mean folks aren't going to try. The American Family Association's One News Now published an "article" about the lifting of the blood ban. Unfortunately, it chose not to cite any medical professionals or include any medical information.

Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality
says that doesn't make sense. "First of all, HIV rates and sexually
transmitted diseases are rising among homosexual-practicing men," he
states. "So why would we be talking about softening the blood ban at a
time when [STDs] are on the rise among men who have sex with men?"

The panel's recommendation is to allow men to donate blood if they
have been abstinent for a year – a proposal supported by the American
Red Cross – but LaBarbera finds it difficult to believe they would
abstain.

He
also stresses that lifting the ban isn't a civil rights issue and it
also isn't a matter of lifting any stigma attached to homosexual
behavior. "The number-one consideration for Americans is keeping the
blood as safe as possible," he notes, "and to me it makes no sense [to
make] it more likely that people who practice disease-producing behavior
would be likely to give blood."

I might point out that LaBarbera has no background in medicine.

This should be a no-brainer, but my guess is that more members of the anti-gay right will be raising objections. We can probably count on them to raise specters of contaminated blood supplies and, if they stoop that low, of the possibility of children becoming infected with HIV because of contaminated blood.

About Me

Alvin McEwen is 45-year-old African-American gay man who resides in Columbia, SC.
McEwen's blog, Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters, and writings have been mentioned by Americablog.com, Goodasyou.org, People for the American Way, PageOneQ.com, The Washington Post, Raw Story, The Advocate, Media Matters for America, Crooksandliars.com, Thinkprogress.org, Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, Melissa Harris-Perry, The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, The Washington Blade, and Foxnews.com.
In addition, he is also a past contributor to Pam's House Blend,Justice For All, LGBTQ Nation, and Alternet.org. He is a present contributor to the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post,
He is the 2007 recipient of the Harriet Daniels Hancock Volunteer of the Year Award and the 2010 recipient of the Order of the Pink Palmetto from the SC Pride Movement as well as the 2009 recipient of the Audre Lorde/James Baldwin Civil Rights Activist Award from SC Black Pride. In addition, he is a three-time nominee of the Ed Madden Media Advocacy Award from SC Pride.